Child labor in Bangladesh

Marjina is one of the women working in the workshop recycling used batteries. She moved from her home town in the country side to Dhaka with her children so that she can pay her debts. Yet, the harder she works, the more debts she has. This is a life of one of the poor women and children in Bangladesh. Their job in these workshops is to break used batteries then take the recyclable carbon rods and reusable metal pieces out. Women earn from 30 to 50 taka (40 to 70 cents)  a day while children gain a dollar in more than a week.

The children stayed at the workshop with their mothers since there is no place for them. The environment there is full of carbon dust and toxic, which is why they suffer from chest and eye problems as well as black lung disease. People have to work and stay in a harsh condition: only a 60-watt bulb or a small window lit up the cabin, long hours and carbon dust is everywhere.

This is the view in one single workshop in a country. Meanwhile, according to UNICEF’s report – State of the World’s children, there are 250 million children working worldwide; 170 million of them employ under dangerous conditions such as mines, chemicals or pesticides. There are reasons for increasing child labour in countries such as Bangladesh. Natural disasters in rural areas like floods, cyclones, soil erosion resulting from global warming force poor families to migrate to cities for job opportunities, turning Dhaka into one of the most populated cities in the world. Moreover, the insufficient amount of government’s social sector investment due to corruption plunges Bangladesh’s poverty rate further.  The country’s Corruption Perception Index, measuring by Transparency International, was at the worst group for many years.

Climate changing and corruption have created serious impacts on more than 7 million Bangladeshi children. They work from 6 in the morning to 7 in the evening so that they can have a daily meal. Ironically, this country is where most of NGOs and international agencies located.

To solve the problem, the author believes that an economic solution satisfying both businesses and children will be efficient. She gives an example as illustrating her point: garment, one of the leading export industries in Bangladesh hire thousands of children, offering them tasks like help packing products. As consequences, they save costs from paying the children low wages. However, Tom Harkin, an Iowa senator introducing an act banning garment fr0m nations that employing child labor. Fear of losing customers, garment firms immediately removed 50000 children out of their factories. Yet these children have to find other dangerous jobs: construction, rolling cigarettes or even prostitution.

Child labour not only brings disadvantages. For many children, working brings food back to their families. No jobs means no food or no shelter for them. Other take jobs to be more mature and build necessary skills for their future life. Hence, the authorities and publicities should move towards creating better working condition and in addition, policies that stop abusing and minimal wages that enough for their living. As the final speech of Amsterdam Conference on Child Labour in 1997 pointed out, “It is not work but exploitation in the workplace should be targeted”.

A summary of Children of the Black Dust, by Shehzad Noorani.

The case of Chernobyl nuclear power plant

Chernobyl nuclear power plant was started to construct in 1970, near Pripyat River, which was the link between Kyiv Reservoir and Ukraine’s main water supply – Dnepr River. 7 years later, the first reactor operated, following by three more. They are called as RBMK (“high-power channel reactor” in Russian).  Right from the first run – from 1981 to 1985, there were more than 100 emergency shutdowns in the power plant. They were occurred due to equipment as the directors claimed, however most people believed that the reason possibly came from the machines themselves since thirty flaws had been found.

The disaster roots on April 25, 1986, when the Chernobyl crew conducted an experiment finding out the time a spinning turbine stop producing energy after shutting down machine, yet before the emergency turbines started on the fourth RBMK. It was done by two operators who did not have much experiences along with other 15 workers. Every emergency shutdown tool was not turn on for running the experiment and worse, the director and leading engineer were not there. While an operator was increasing the reactor’s power, the machine suddenly released a strong source of energy that even destroyed the roof. 50-60% iodine-131 and 20-50% cesium-137 – which were the most dangerous radio-nuclides – were released into the atmosphere more than a week later not by only the explosion but also by a graphite fire happening in the reactor at the same time.

To deal with the problem, a team was created under command of Soviet Ideology Secretary Ligachev and Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, trying to extinguish the fire and evacuate people simultaneously. Twenty-nine firemen and first-aid workers had died while trying to stop the fire. At the same time, the government drew an evacuation area – 10 km radius around the sector, including two cities Pripyat and Chernobyl. Yet, no health warning was announced to the residents there.  60000 people were moved away from the field a week after and 1882 people had been sent to the hospital. Approximately 350000 people were evacuated by 2000.  The health situation of people who helped cleaning Chernobyl and those living around was mostly covered away from the media, hence were not regarded as official victims of the accident for a while. Only years later, their figures were revealed – more than 10000 volunteers were dead and many of them committed suicide; on the side of people living within the area, 4.5 million were recognized as victims now.

Children born after the event are also suffered many consequences. 5000 of them are found having thyroid cancer due to the effect of iodine-131. Increasing number of Down syndrome adolescents and other mental illnesses in those contaminated areas are linked with the amount of radioactive in the soil and the atmosphere. Not only people, the nature also is also enduring the results of Chernobyl. 8 to 22 percent of Ukraine and Belarus’s land were everlastingly spoiled and 25 percent of Russian and Belorussian forest was destroyed additionally.

The Ukraine authorities decided to permanently closed Chernobyl nuclear power plant a decade ago. Still, the nations relating to this case are participating in nuclear program again – Belarus has publicised the building of a nuclear station in Mahileu, an area that also being contaminated. The lives of millions of people are in jeopardy. Who can assure that a second Chernobyl case will not happen again?

A summary from Fallout – The Enduring Tragedy of Chernobyl, by David R.Marples

Can we eat to starve cancer? (William Li)

William Li, a co-founder of Angiogenesis Foundation has presented a speech introducing a revolutionary method to prevent cancer from early stages. It is called anti-angiogenesis, which prevents blood vessels from transferring blood and nutrients into tumor cancer cells. Anti-angiogenesis can be applied not only for cancer yet also for other diseases as well due to the fact that all illnesses originate from malfunctioned cells. These cells need nutrious substances to grow and blood vains can satisfy their needs. After growing, they can clone themselves and spread through organs.

As William Li said, blood vessels are packed throughout the body, forming a network transporting blood to every single cell. There are 60000 miles of them in an adult, which mean that it can form a line that circulate the earth twice.  According to Wikipedia, blood vessels split into three types: arteries – bring the blood from the heart, capillaries – support the exchanging process of chemicals between blood and tissues and lastly, veins – taking blood back to the heart. Capillaries are the smallest and the most important ones – scientists label them as “vessels of life and death”.  They have a characteristic of adopting different function depending on the environment. For example, in liver they can remove harmful chemicals from blood while helping exchanging gas in lungs. Not only that, they can also grow in circumstances such as when healing a wound or forming placenta.

In other words, our body can control the amount of blood vessels needed by a process calls angiogenesis.  If there is an incident of excessive or insufficient blood vessels, diseases will break out. Research shows that hair loss occurs by lack of blood vessels or cancer and arthritis comes from excessive capillaries amount.  This arrives to a conclusion that nearly all diseases are originated by imbalance blood vessels and by stopping capillaries from providing nutritious chemicals and oxygen to tumors, illnesses might have less chances to grow, especially cancer. This can be done by preventing angiogenesis to happen. William Li’s team call this process antiangiogenetic therapy. He shows an example of a patient suffering from brain cancer and using this therapy in a month. The tumor is more harmless after being starved. Further steps have been taken through applying to other species, such as a 20 year-old Florida dolphin which suffers cancer inside her mouth. The team painted antiangiogenic paste on the tumors three times a week. Over seven months, the cells disappear. Another example is a horse has a tumor on his lip. Six months later, he recovers from the disease by an antiangiogenic cream.

From these successes, William Li started to question himself:  can antiangiogenesis therapy apply to early stages of cancer by affecting the factors that cause the disease. He found out that it might be achieved by eating food that contain antiangiogenesis nutritions. Extracts of strawberry, grape and soya bean are inserted into abnormal angiogenesis and they slow down the process by 60%. More and more foods are being researched for this ability.  The nutrition factor has been compared and they can reduce the risk of cancer more than drugs.

In my opinion, this is a promising method to preventing as well as treating cancer. However, more researches should be done for different cancer types to find out whether it is still effective. At the moment, there is no side-effect of the therapy yet there is worriment from the publicity that they can happen in the future.

Season.of.demolition

December comes

I gather bits of regrets, reveries

And invisible pains

Pour down into a hole

From there, blooming a blossom

How black and soft its petals are!

In night time, rain arrives

Lamenting damnation

Watering the little blossom

Turning her into a mature flower.

The mature flower stands there

All by herself…

While all creatures are dying.

January enters.

Life revives.

Taking the flower away

Yet, her scent is still in the air, somehow.

.